Exposing pro-Israel bias, propaganda, disinformation and spin in Australia's mainstream media. Monitoring pro-Israel influence in Australia's public and political arena.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Doing the Donkey* in the NSW Knesset 6

On the speech of The Hon. David Clarke, Liberal Party, in the NSW Legislative Council, arising out of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel (PFoI) "study mission" 'debate' of March 14:

Behold a closed mind masquerading as an open mind:

"Following the conclusion of the organised study tour, my wife and I stayed for an additional period to meet with those people we believed would assist us in coming to an informed and accurate view of present day Israel."

How disingenuous! As if this Catholic ultra hadn't already made up his mind about Israel and just about everything else under the sun aeons ago.

Some examples of that informed and accurate view of Israel:

"I found Israel to be a free and democratic society. In fact it is a vibrant and open democracy and every possible viewpoint is represented in the political spectrum."

"I constantly marvel that for 65 years Israel has maintained constraint and calmness in the face of hostility, threats and terrorist attacks."

"What the United States faced on [9/11] is the threat that Israel has faced every day of its existence. It is something it has faced day in and day out for 65 years."

Such views, of course, are typical of the conga line of Islamophobic Zionist suckholes who now infest the Australian ms media, just about all of whom, it seems, have had a hand in shaping and confirming Clarke's views on Israel (and much else). Here, for example, is a list of his mentors from a speech he delivered in state parliament on May 27, 2003:

"For too long the media was a closed shop, off limits to those who were not part of the left elite establishment. Now we see the emergence of commentators who are articulating the mainstream views held by the great majority of Australians. One who did persevere in in difficult times was the late Bob Santamaria. I pay tribute to his memory: he was a man of heroic virtue. In present times, the Daily Telegraph's Piers Akerman is one who articulates what the majority of the NSW electorate thinks. Rare is the occasion when I find myself in disagreement with him. I find Miranda Devine, Christopher Pearson, Michael Duffy, Janet Albrechtson and Paddy McGuinness. Also worth reading, as I do, Paul Sheehan."

What a roll call of reaction!

Clarke concludes his "study mission" speech thus:

"[The study tour] reinforced my view that support for the State of Israel is necessary for the defeat of international terrorism; in fact, it is the frontline in that fight. It reinforced my view that the State of Israel is a land where democracy and freedom continue to flourish and that we in Australia have a moral imperative to lend our support. It was a righteous cause 65 years ago and it is still a righteous cause 65 years later."

Just how righteous a cause Israel was 65 years ago can be seen from the following sketch of Irgun terrorists at play in the Palestinian village of Deir Yasin on April 10, 1948:

"The gang was wearing country uniform, with helmets. All of them were young, some even adolescents, men and women, armed to the teeth: revolvers, machine-guns, hand grenades, and also large cutlasses in their hands, most of them still blood-stained. A beautiful young girl, with criminal eyes, showed me hers still dripping with blood; she displayed it like a trophy. This was the 'cleaning up' team, that was obviously performing its task very conscientiously." (Jacques de Reynier, International Red Cross chief in Palestine in 1948, quoted in From Haven to Conquest: Readings in Zionism & the Palestine Problem Until 1948, edited by Walid Khalidi, 1973, p 763)

That Clarke's views are as removed from the reality of the modern Middle East as the planet Pluto is from the sun is amply indicated in an earlier Legislative Council speech when, in dismissing the Palestinian's right of return, he referred to "Palestinians who claim to have lived in Israel at the time of its independence in 1948 and who left for whatever reason..." (See my 17/9/11 post Witches Brew 1.)

Predictably, Clarke's views on Australian history are in like vein. I quote again from his speech of May 27, 2003:

"I look back on our history with great pride. I honour those who came to our shores in those early years from the British Isles. They came here as settlers, not as invaders, as revisionists would try to have us believe. They overcame great adversity and they laid the foundations... for our State and our nation. They sanctified our nation through their efforts, achievements and sacrifice. It is a monumental besmirching of their memory and a falsification of history to claim otherwise. God can give a vocation not only to individuals but also to nations. Great Britain had a vocation that brought great humanitarian advances to many parts of the world, and certainly to Australia."

That's right, folks, the settler-colonial tsunamis which devastated Palestine and Australia, are actually "great humanitarian advances" initiated by God through the Britz.

Fair takes your breath away, doesn't it?

Next in the Doing the Donkey in the NSW Knesset series: Matthew Mason-Cox MLC finds his "inner Jew" in Israel.